"Machete" is insanely violent, insanely over the top and pretty much just flat-out insane.

It's also insanely entertaining, though not - NOT - for the faint of heart.

Director Robert Rodriguez has expanded his mock trailer for "Grindhouse," with Danny Trejo starring as the title character, a wronged Federale now in the U.S. working as a day laborer. He gets caught up in a murky political plot involving illegal immigration, but if you're looking for thoughtful, clear-headed discourse on the topic, this is perhaps not the place to find it. Rodriguez and co-director Ethan Maniquis treat immigration with the subtlety that Wile E. Coyote brings to birdwatching.

When the film, written by Rodriguez and his cousin Alvaro, tackles the topic head-on - when bodyguards recently beaten by Machete pause for a discussion about the irony of Americans allowing immigrants to care for their children, work in their yards, etc., but won't let them into the country, for instance - it seems ridiculously out of place (of course, there's always the chance that it's supposed to). But when Machete wields a weed-whacker as a weapon, there is almost a subtle beauty to it.

Wait, did I say "subtle?" That word has no business being associated with this. In a movie that features Lindsay Lohan dressed in a nun's habit firing a machine gun, it just doesn't fit.

The story begins in Mexico, where Machete and other authorities are at war with Torrez, a drug kingpin played by - yes - Steven Seagal. Tragic circumstances lead to his fleeing to Texas, and by "tragic" I mean a scene involving so many beheadings in five minutes that Henry VIII would find it distasteful. Three years later, a strange offer arrives from a man named Booth (Jeff Fahey): He'll pay Machete $150,000 to assassinate McLaughlin (Robert De Niro), a state senator.

Meanwhile, Luz (Michelle Rodriguez) uses the truck she sells tacos out of as a base of operations for a network connecting undocumented workers. She's being watched by Sartana (Jessica Alba), a conflicted Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent.

(Page 2 of 2)

Booth must also contend with his druggie daughter June (Lohan), who has big plans as a self-styled Internet, um, celebrity. In the sort of self-referential, wink-and-nod sensibility of the film, Lohan's character says, "I know all about what the online world wants. And they want me." These elements and more will eventually come together, sort of, in the way that these things do in movies, to create a kind of superhero out of Machete.

Trejo is fine, but mostly gets to grimace. The acting generally isn't exactly riveting - Alba's most-convincing scene is when she is practicing kickboxing on the Wii - and the story is kind of ridiculous, which is actually OK, because it's meant to be.

But what cuts through all of this (literally, at times) is Rodriguez's clear love of film. He apes the grindhouse style to perfection, with grainy film stock for the opening credits and hilarious use of music (every love scene is punctuated with the chucka-chucka soundtrack from porn movies), along with the requisite buckets of blood and plenty of mayhem.

Rodriguez uses everything. Too much? Of course. In a movie like "Machete," that's the idea.